Summary: Mental health concerns linked to an ageing population include, Alzheimer’s disease (AD), dementia, mild cognitive impairment and subjective cognitive decline. We should say at the outset that when people are diagnosed with early-stage dementia, increased stress levels leading to poorer health more generally may follow close behind. This notion was reflected in the aims of this review.

There is evidence that meditation technologies can boost brain function and structure, but there is a lack of research investigating the benefits to populations already suffering from declining cognitive performance. This narrative review examined ten studies that explored the benefits of meditation on dementia-related memory conditions. The study looked across a range of scientific papers to identify trends and patterns. This should not be confused with experimental replication (the repetition of experiments to confirm scientific reliability).

The reviewed studies were seeking to understand if meditation could influence the cognitive performance, quality of life and perceived stress of people already experiencing different degrees of memory-related cognitive decline. The good news is that all of the studies demonstrated significant or ‘moving towards significant’ results. Collectively, these findings indicated that meditation could lead to

a reduction in cognitive decline

an increase in functional connectivity in the brain

a reduction in perceived stress

an increase in quality of life

The bottom line is that meditation appears able to improve brain function in people already suffering cognitive decline. Observed changes are likely to be linked to structural alterations in the brain. These positive developments can, in turn, lead to reduced levels of stress and improved quality of life.

“These preliminary findings offer causes for optimism in the treatment of cognitive decline. However caution must be expressed until results have been reliably replicated.”

Summary: Meditation research is now so fragmented that only by taking an overview can a fuller understanding of what we know be arrived at. In the research literature, these overviews are called strategic reviews or meta-studies. Newberg and colleagues offer their perspective on what we know about how our brain functions decline and what we can do to stop it. The authors set out the broad definitions for Alzheimer’s Disease, Frontotemporal lobar dementia (FTLD) including Pick’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease, and discuss the potential of meditation to help people with declining brain function.

There is no shortage of evidence for a relationship between meditation and both functional and structural change in the brain, but the devil really is in the detail. In common with a wide range of other behaviours, meditation will have an effect on the brain, but understanding which meditation methods create which effects is not a simple matter. This meta-study describes the influence of meditation into two areas, attention and memory, but it also includes an element of cognition more generally. The paper illustrates evidence for a relationship between meditation and improvements in performance in all three areas (attention, memory and other cognitive functions). Some of these improvements have been linked to recorded physical changes to the brain. Individual studies are discussed demonstrating quite specific effects of meditation practices. For example that vipassana meditation appears to improve working memory and focused attention methods may help sustained visual attention.

Unfortunately, there is almost no replication of the cited effects (replication being identical studies reporting the same results). This report also reduces all meditation to a singular family of mind training, evidence suggests that this is an unscientific approach. Grouping together methods from kundalini, tantra, sutra with MBIs in a meta-review is fraught with difficulty, particularly as robust theoretical frameworks for these practices don’t exist in neuroscience or cognitive psychology. However, in defence of the authors, meditation has been researched in the west for at least 45 years and attempts to understand and review progress should be welcomed.

Summary: The idea that brain function inevitably declines as people grow older is firmly established in both clinical and cognitive branches of psychology. This particular study is one of only a handful that I have seen to suggest, that even in retirement, people can maintain and even increase both structure and function in the brain. Participants of retirement age with a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) were asked to engage in a number of activities linked to brain health. They included: cognitive stimulation, Omega 3 supplements, some physical exercise, a change in diet and mindfulness meditation. Participant undertook a range of cognitive tests before the interventions and at the end of the experiment.

Results showed that 84% of participants saw an improvement in their cognitive performance. Further neuroimaging examinations revealed that a majority of a sample of the participants also demonstrated no decline or an actual increase in the volume of the hippocampus. Although this was a preliminary study with a number of methodological problems, it is suggestive that people may have a lot more control over brain structure and function than is generally assumed. This kind of ‘shotgun’ approach can support general theories but adds little to our understanding of the extent to which particular interventions (or combination of interventions) may offer benefit. It also makes the establishment of robust scientific theory a challenge, as no single theory can incorporate such a wide range of activities. For example with a new diet, can cognitive changes be attributed to the food that was no longer being eaten or the new food? Or a combination of the two? However simply to demonstrate that older adults can experience increased structure in certain brain regions is an important contribution to our understanding of the human brain.